The Essential Domino: American Politics and Vietnam

Abstract

AS Henry Kissinger has written, public support is acid u test of a foreign policy. For a President to be successful A? ^in maintaining his nation's security he needs to believe, and others need to believe, that he has solid support at home. It was President Johnson's judgment that if the United States permitted the fall of Vietnam to communism, American politics would turn ugly and inward and the world would be a less safe place in which to live. Later, President Nixon would declare : The right way out of Vietnam is crucial to our changing role in the world, and the peace in the world. In order to gain support for these judg ments and the objectives in Vietnam which flowed from them, our Presidents have had to weave together the steel-of-war strategy with the strands of domestic politics. Neither the Americans nor the Vietnamese communists had good odds for a traditional military victory in Vietnam. Given the mutual will to continue the war and self-imposed American restraint in the use of force, stalemate was the most likely out come.